Not sure cars can track with inflation since all the gov't regulations imposed on them to meet safety, environmental, efficiency, etc. standards.
Which simply proves my point: things have gotten a lot more expensive now, relative to where they were 20 or 30 years ago, particularly for someone just starting out.
For example, it used to be that a minor fender-bender would not take a car off the road. Now, if the airbags go, that car will be a write-off, even if it wasn’t that old. Happened to a millennial I know. He was careful to save up his money, bought a car that was only a few years old, and then during a snow storm hit a patch of ice and ran off the road. The airbags went off and the insurance company wrote it off and paid him 75% of fmv, which left him with no car and not enough money to get an adequate replacement. When that happened to me in my first car, which I bought for $800 when it was only about 14 years old, I didn’t even bother with the insurance company; I went to the junk yard, bought a new left front fender and grill for about $75, and spent an afternoon unbolting the old one and bolting on the new one. My friend could not have done that with his car and still had a car that would pass safety inspection, or even have been drivable.